Stress Fracture
by Tigger23505
Summary: Not sure where the title comes from. Jim deals with his PTSS after waking from a dream. This one has been kicking around for a while. Took some advice from an artist friend to realize that it was time to stop monkeying with this one.


Stress Fracture

Disclaimer: Here's the drill – I don't own Star Trek; I don't make any money doing this; I have Starquilter57's permission to use those portions of her universe that intersect with mine – Specifically Counselor LaPlante and Menace appear with her permission. Remember – writing fan fiction without a disclaimer is as dangerous as Opilio season in Alaska. The only thing more dangerous, than no disclaimer is stealing other people's Ocs.

* * *

Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care

Macbeth: Act 2 Scene 2

Wm. Shakespeare

As badly as we need it sometimes it come with barbed wire and infiltrators.

* * *

Jim sat bolt upright in his bed. The glow of a small lamp showed that he was in his room on the Enterprise. He had "survived" another nightmare.

Actually it was nightmare number three, he had classified his nightmares into four categories. Nightmare number 1 was living with Frank; number 2 was getting caught by the enforcers on Tarsus; number 3 was losing to Nero on the Nararda; number 4 was everything else mostly fever dreams and allergy reaction dreams.

With a few obvious exceptions, he had after all lived with Frank, all of the nightmares represented things that had not happened. In this particular version, Pike was already dead when he arrived in the torture chamber. So when Nero got the drop on him, it was all over.

In reality, Pike had dropped Nero with a phaser shot saving Jim.

Corrie, the ship's counselor had gotten him started journaling his dreams after they happened, while they were still vivid in his mind. The journal did several important things. It was a chance to remind himself that he was safe on _Enterprise_ and that it was just a dream. Once he had the dream written down he would walk to the Rec Room and see who was up. After a couple of cookies or an apple he would head back to his room and listen to one of his calm mixes. Bones thought they were anything but calming, some of the songs came from recordings by Menace. On the other hand Bones' idea of calming sounded to Jim like three cats in a sack.

If he was really lucky Spock would be wandering around. Apparently Vulcans needed a third to half as much sleep as Terrans. Spock had taken him aside several months ago, during a New Years party, to inform him that he suffered from PTSS. He didn't know that Jim also had it and that Bones had been watching out for him since the Battle of Vulcan.

Jim was pretty sure that Bones didn't have PTSS but it was hard to tell with the doc. He put on a pretty good act. Like a good sourdough boule, crusty on the outside but soft inside. Leonard yelled and grumbled a lot, but he always seemed to be able to pull a rabbit out of his hat at the right time.

Jim pulled on a shirt and pants, then slipped his feet into a pair of moccasins, the chef had served onion soup in bread bowls, he wondered if any of the bread was left. Soup was always gone by the end of dinner, and there was no point in putting replicated soup in a bread bowl. He grabbed a PADD off of the desk, one marked with some old nautical flag stickers. The flags read Papa Tango Sierra Sierra. This particular PADD had several programs designed to guide the user through living with PTSS. He had some assigned reading to do on negative coping techniques. He would discus the reading with Corrie at their next meeting. Jim smiled as he remembered how some parts of his life were pretty ineffective coping strategies. Then again, picking a fight with "Cupcake" had gotten, Admiral Pike's attention.

Jim was sure that in some parallel universe he had gotten drunk and then fallen into a ditch and drowned. Fortunately in his universe, Chris Pike had been looking out for him, and rescued him from himself. Jim knew that if things had turned out differently after the destruction of Vulcan, that he would have been out on his ear.

* * *

Author's Note: This story started out as a note on Facebook from the Veteran's Administration reminding me that their PTSD Coach application is now available for both iPhone and Android. Please, if you have PTSD or if you know some one with it, do what you have needs done to help or get help. Some friends of mine stepped in when I couldn't see how bad things were and got me the help I needed. .

Sound track for this dark little fic – the Johnny Cash version of Peter La Farge's "Ballad of Ira Hayes"


End file.
